All the neoconfederates are colluding

Are the Supreme Court conservatives coordinating with Republican politicians to subvert voting rights? It sure looks like it.

The neoconfederates (left to right) Tennessee governor Bill Lee, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, Supreme Court Samuel Alito Jr., Chief Justice John Roberts and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Isn’t it rich? Aren’t they a pair? Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and Jeff Landry: the “lock ‘em up” Republican governor of Louisiana share a clear political goal: securing permanent Republican control of Congress and enough state legislatures to ensure that “the right people” remain in control of America forever. And their designated hit man in the drive to murder the Voting Rights Act is justice Samuel Alito Jr.

But are they doing more than agreeing? Are they actually colluding?

I can’t prove it. But it sure looks like it.

A rush to judgment

Five days after gutting the Voting Rights Act, the US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to fast-track implementation of its decision so Louisiana could move forward and draw new congressional maps for the midterms even though people had already started voting in Democratic and Republican primaries. I mean… NO SENSE WAITING to try to lock in the Republican majorities in Congress that will let the corrupt members of the Supreme court continue to join the Republican grift train, amirite?

The highly unusual decision was written in a one-page order by Justice Samuel Alito Jr., who ordered his ruling last week in Louisiana vs. Callais to go into effect immediately rather than making Louisiana wait the customary 32 days before a Supreme Court ruling is certified and sent back to a lower court triggered an angry back and forth between Alito and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who issued a scathing solo dissent.

Here’s the quote:

To avoid the appearance of partiality here, we could, as per usual, opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures. … But, today, the Court chooses the opposite. Not content to have decided the law, it now takes steps to influence its implementation. The Court’s decision to buck our usual practice under Rule 45.3 and issue the judgment forthwith is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.

And make no mistake… that course of action does not follow from the Callais decision itself. The question whether our decision should affect the map to be used in the ongoing primaries raises a host of legal and political questions that are entirely independent of the issue in Callais. Among the legal ones, there is the Court’s previous insistence that—even at the cost of letting partisan gamesmanship corrupt our democracy —courts should not ‘risk assuming political . . . responsibility for a [partisan map- drawing] process that often produces ill will and distrust … There is also the so-called Purcell principle, which we invoked only five months ago to chide a federal district court for “improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign.”

The Court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power. Because this abandon is unwarranted and unwise, respectfully, I dissent.

But the way that these decisions are issued … the decision is printed first … and so before you even get the chance to read Justice Jackson’s dissent … Alito gets to fire the first shot. So of course he tagged his objection to the dissent to his closing statement and got all bitchy about it … writing:

The dissent in this suit levels charges that cannot go unanswered. The dissent would require that the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional.*... The dissent does not claim that it is now too late for the state legislature or the District Court to adopt a new map that complies with the Constitution. Nor does the dissent assert that it is not feasible for the elections to be held under such a map. Instead, the dissent offers two reasons for its proposed course of action. One is trivial at best, and the other is baseless and insulting.

In other words, the impudent Black lady didn’t say that implementing the Alito maps couldn’t be done, she had the gall to say it shouldn’t be done. His tirade continues:

The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power. … That is a ground-less and utterly irresponsible charge. What principle has the Court violated? The principle that Rule 45.3’s 32-day default period should never be shortened even when there is good reason to do so? The principle that we should never take any action that might unjustifiably be criticized as Partisan?

Um … yes, Sam. That is the exact principle y’all shouldn’t be violating. Because looking partisan exposes you AS partisan.

Everyone’s an insurrectionist

Reading Alito’s bitching, it’s impossible to forget that he’s ’the guy who admitted to activist undercover journalist Lauren Windsor that he views the country as in a culture war that either the left or the right will “win.”

And what does winning look like to a guy who had pro-Trump insurrection flags on his lawn that he blamed on his wife? A judge who before he became George W. Bush’s second choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor after the Harriet Myers flameout, worked as a prosecutor under Trump’s elder sister Mary Trump:

When the first President Bush named Judge Alito to the appeals court in 1990, he came with the recommendations of two judges on the court who were close to Judge Becker -- Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, who had been once Judge Alito's boss as a prosecutor, and Judge Leonard Garth, for whom Judge Alito had clerked. Colleagues say Judge Becker quickly befriended the new judge despite starkly different politics as well as personalities.

… and whose taste for the Court-affiliated donor-funded good life rivals that of the most kept man on the Court?

The neoconfederates: Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.

What does it look like to Clarence Thomas, whose wife was literally part of the so-called “stop the steal” movement that culminated in the January 6th insurrection?

What does winning look like to the chief Justice who wrote the decision that exempted the insurrectionist candidate Donald trump from Article 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says that an insurrectionist can’t run for office without getting clearance from Congress, and who has spent basically his entire adult life fighting to repeal the Voting Rights Act?

A young John Roberts shakes hands with President Reagan.

What does it look like to six conservative justices who owe their lifetime appointments to a far right wing billionaire who’s bent on warping the courts to his personal service and to the service of his friends? Not to mention all the money their families are raking in, thanks to the justice’s positions.

And now … surprise surprise … it turns out the plaintiff in the case for which Alito wrote the decision gutting the Voting Rights Act is a literal participant in the insurrection that President Grift back in business. And not just him: his fellow billionaire friends in the defense, fossil fuel, surveillance tech, private prison and other industries. Too bad the airlines can’t come up with a scheme that can help them eat from the Trump slop bowl, too. Perhaps some jobs would be saved.

But back to this one particular insurrectionist.

Democracy Docket busted the lead plaintiff in Louisiana vs. Callais, formerly described in the lawsuit that reached the Roberts court as a “non–African American voter from Brusly, Louisiana, whose congressional district changed after his state redrew its districts” and, “a member of a local board of supervisors in 2024.” But who is actually Phillip “Bert” Callais … a 2020 election denier who posted video on his Facebook showing he was at the capitol with the other insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. The posts are no longer viewable. For some reason.

Callais has a thick Twitter history … here are a few of his x-twitter posts:

He seemed fond of screeching about mail-in balloting and demanding that disabled voters find someone to haul them to the polls rather than vote absentee and “endanger” elections. Also, that’s him posing with a fellow election denier celebrating their SCOTUS win.

But I’m sure Sam Alito had NO IDEA he was facing a fellow insurrectionist in the courtroom and making a ruling enshrining Trump’s election denial conspiracy theories into law …. No idea at all, right?

Collusion, anyone?

Again, I can’t prove that these people are colluding. But it seems awfully convenient that the Leo Court happened upon a case, which they openly asked for, whose lead plaintiff is a Trump-style 2020 election denier from the home state of the House speaker (and of. the legendary Homer Plessy…) There’s now a recall effort under way against Landry (and hopefully soon against every Republican governor in the South.)

And Louisiana is not the only former Confederate state to spring into action.

Alabama’s outgoing governor Kay Ivey and Tennessee’s governor and state legislature have also launched special sessions to erase Black representation in their States — and in the case of Tennessee, to put Memphis into the apartheid hands of white conservatives. That has prompted massive protests, including those led by State Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running in the primary for the potentially deleted seat held by Congressman Steve Cohen, a rare white Southern Democrat in this era. Tennessee’s Bill Lee is also pushing to help the feds develop a voter citizenship database, the better to profile Black and brown voters in his state.

Meanwhile all hell broke out Thursday in Tennessee, where the white nationalist state house wasted no time erasing the lone Democratic congressional seat, located in Memphis.

That was State Rep. Justin Jones in the first clip burning the confederate flag, as any patriot would. And the second clip was Rep. Justin Pearson, who happens to be running for the now-erased congressional seat currently held by Steve Cohen.

Trump’s war on truth (and Black people)

Donald Trump’s paranoid refusal to accept that he lost the 2020 election has warped every aspect of the government and the Republican Party, with ballots seized in Fulton County, Georgia — a Democratic stronghold no Republican could ever have won — and even federal demands for the names of polling workers who served during the 2020 race — the better to intimidate and threaten them, I’m sure.

Arizona is facing the same federal onslaught, which Democrats there are fighting with a referendum to protect mail in balloting.

The office and home of Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas was raided this week by the FBI — in what apparently is a follow-up to yet another Lindsey Halligan special. Coincidentally, I’m sure, Senator Lucas was the vocal politician behind the successful bid to allow Democratic redistricting in the state, in response to what Republicans have been doing on Trump’s orders, starting with Texas — whose racist gerrymandered maps the Roberts court let stand for the current election.

And now it seems that it’s not just the DOJ but also the Supreme Court’s conservative majority that is working hand in glove with Republican state leaders and their shared donors to lock in Republican control despite the many signs pointing to an electoral bloodbath in November (thanks to Trump.)

It’s hard to escape this conclusion by David Daley and Lisa Graves for Slate regarding John Roberts:

As those GOP legislators ripped up Black districts, and the Roberts court’s hyperpartisan ruling faces a growing backlash, Roberts now has the audacity to give speeches claiming that it is wrong to view justices as “political actors.”

The young man who grew up in a town made safe for whites only, who attended an almost entirely white private high school, has helped birth an illegitimate ruling that will significantly bleach out Congress. And the young man who learned the power of race neutrality in part from a Supreme Court justice who personally tried to intimidate Black voters has helped dress this faux–intellectual theory into legalese that has destroyed the legislation that had finally brought the promise of a thriving multiracial democracy into view, with growing representation of Black Americans.

Back in 2005, when Roberts rhapsodized about Indiana farmland and an endless horizon punctuated only by silos and barns, he was substituting a humble, real-life Midwest upbringing for his own. This mythic America is not where he actually grew up, but the whites-only town with the whites-only country club he golfed at is where his vision seems to still begin and end.

Catch David Daley tonight on The Joy Reid Show, where he will also discuss his new book about the right’s 50 year plan to rig elections.

Odds and ends

Jane Fonda posted a beautiful tribute to the late Ted Turner on her IG page. Rest in peace to Mr. Turner and condolences to Ms. Fonda and her family.

I’ll be with Jane Fonda on June 14 in New York City for the Committee for the First Amendment’s epic concert standing up for what’s left of the constitution’s free speech clause.